Snippets #1 from Peter Adams talks - Ideas Summit 2009

[MelaQuin]

STAGES of DEVELOPMENT
From Peter Adams talks at the Ideas Summit in July 2009

When you are working a tree don’t overwork it. Partially style it and then allow it to rest for a couple of months before fine wiring it. The tree will develop better and faster than a tree stripped down in initial styling.

The greatest temptation is to take the tree too far too soon. Go part way and let the tree rest. Feed it, let it grow with TLC and the tree will sail past a plant that has been overworked and treated unsympathetically.

Pushing the foliage line in makes the tree look taller and older.

Structuring a tree… think of it as distilling the tree, distilling the basics of your design for the tree

Styling is one segment of a tree’s life – it’s the next dozen years that count.

When you want to do major cutting do it in the fall [autumn] – after spring growth and summer heat – in the last growing season. The callous that will develop will be neater.

Let the tree be a tree between dynamic bonsaiing. Don’t pinch, pinch, pinch all the time. This depletes the tree’s energy and restricts growing. Let it go wild and then regain the shape.

Cedars are good to work with but you need to build up and maintain their vigour.

When you are bending, put your hands over the wood and bend carefully, train your hands to feel the tissues in the branch move under your fingers. Compress it, don’t let the branch go back on itself. Don’t lose concentration or you could snap the branch. Doing it this way can get a safer bend to the branch. For major bending you use guy wires and tighten a couple of turns each day to gradually increase the movement instead of trying to do it at once. This is effective on brittle trees such as azaleas and pyracanthas.

The myth of the apex has screwed up more bonsai designs than anything. Most trees lack the energy to pull enough juices up to the apex to create a mini tree. They are like us – they tend to sag with age – particularly cedars.

Guard against having a tree too uniform in branch length. If branches are too evenly distributed it doesn’t have value.

Each time you work the tree give it a couple of months off. It will respond much better. Think of yourself as part of the cycle of the tree. Respond to it and it will respond to you.

The important thing is to balance your tree. If you don’t balance the growth the stronger areas will grow too vigorously and destroy the style and unbalance the tree.

Approach your tree sculpturally and bring the tree into that. Think of the trunk as the core and bring the bits into that and superimpose the tree’s natural growth over all.

To encourage the vigour of lower branches let the ends grow.

To be visually satisfactory a bonsai has to be three dimensional.